Once Upon A Time
by singsongsung
Summary: NS. From fake-dating to real-dating. Circa 2x01. Oneshot.


**A/N:** Started this forever ago and _finally_ finished it! Basically, it's what I wish would have happened after the infamous Book Club scene in 2x01. Reviews are love.

**Once Upon a Time**

"That's it for this week…"

Her grandmother's declaration makes Serena stir, as if she's waking up. She hasn't been asleep, she's just been so content, so comfortable. Her eyelids feel heavy, as though she _could_ fall asleep, and her hearing is almost fuzzy. It's the best she's felt all summer, the most at peace with herself she's felt in quite a while.

"Next week we'll read _Audition_, and we can discuss what _really_ happened," Cece divulges in her sweetest, gossipy tone. The women laugh, and Serena feels a rumble underneath the soft shirt her head is resting on that makes her glance up.

Nate is laughing genuinely, though she'd be willing to bet he has no idea what her grandmother's referencing. He's looking at Serena, even as he laughs, his gaze fixed on her affectionately. Gently, he toys with a couple stray strands of her hair, tucking them back behind her ear.

"It's over," he says, quietly and playfully, nudging her shoulder with his own. "We can get up now," he tells her needlessly, as the women around them are standing, smiling at Cece, and dispersing back to their homes.

"I'm comfy," she pouts, her blue eyes locked with his.

He nods, chin bumping lightly against her forehead before he rests his cheek against the top of her head, settling back into the chair comfortably. The way he relaxes so easily makes her think that he must understand, that he must feel it too. It just feels so _right_, the way she's all snuggled into his side. The hand attached to the arm he's got wrapped around her shoulders – sweetly, protectively, maybe possessively – curls around her shoulder a bit more as she cuddles closer. It is hot; her hair is frizzing a little bit and there's perspiration beading at various points of her body, but she never wants to move. She wants a great big fuzzy wool blanket to wrap around them both, and she wants to stay there forever, because this is the good kind of heat.

"Thanks for the invite, Mrs. Rhodes," Nate says politely to her grandmother, smiling. "I really enjoyed the book."

Serena elbows him in the stomach. "The part he _read_," she amends pointedly, shooting him an innocent smile. He scowls in return, like _way to rat me out_, as if they're six years old again, and she has the strange, momentary urge to lean up and kiss his nose, like she would have at that age to annoy him.

"I'm sorry your mother was unable to attend, Nathaniel," Serena's grandmother says, her voice softer. "You're both welcome to join us next week," she adds, handing Nate a copy of _Audition_. Serena reaches for it, too, their hands colliding. Nate sets the book in his lap and settles his hand overtop of hers. Instinctively, Serena flips her hand up beneath his, intertwines their fingers.

Cece watches them cautiously. "Will you be joining us for the afternoon, Nathaniel?" she inquires.

His hand skims down her arm, slipping beneath her elbow and landing lightly on her waist. It makes her shiver. "I –"

Serena interrupts him, well aware that he's got a rendezvous planned with his older woman that afternoon. "Nate and I are going to take a walk on the beach."

Cece's eyes narrow and she protests: "But you spent all morning on the beach!"

"It's the end of summer, Grandma," Serena laughs breathily, her smile confident. She's gotten very good at lying this summer, to others and to herself, she's gotten very good at ignoring the pangs she feels when she does it. "I need all the tan I can get!" Her grandmother still looks uncertain and it makes Serena frown, unsure of herself. "Come on; don't you think it's nice Nate and I are together?"

The second she says _together_, he drops a kiss on her temple, like it's the most natural thing to do. She swallows hard and reminds herself to keep smiling.

Cece gives them one last look, nods, and makes her way back inside. Serena sighs, nuzzling her face against Nate's shirt. The arm he has around her waist tugs her a little closer and she nearly purrs at the feeling, letting her eyes flutter closed.

"What time do you have to meet her?" she asks softly.

"I don't think…I'm going to go," Nate murmurs into her hair, letting out a sigh of his own.

"What?" her eyes fly open and she goes to lift her head, but before she can he speaks.

"Don't move," he says firmly, voice nothing more than a murmur. "You feel so good."

Serena blinks in surprise. Never, in her life, even when they were drunk and totally infatuated with one another, has Nate said anything like that to her. She exhales against his neck. "Why?"

"Why?" He laughs, lips brushing her head. "Because…I don't know. We fit, you and me."

Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes start to sting. "I meant…" She pulls away from him a bit, leaning into the arm he's got around her and away from his body, but she doesn't look him in the eye. "I mean, why aren't you meeting her?"

Nate's eyes go comically wide for a moment as he realizes what he's basically revealed to her without her having asked for it, and she giggles, and the tension between them dissipates, settling again.

"And of course we fit, you idiot," she tells him lightly, giving his hand a squeeze, because it is a truth that can't be denied. They match, their physical appearances and their personalities and their outlooks on life, but they also have enough differences to even them out. "Now, tell me what's going on."

"I think it's…over. With…"

"Your mystery woman?" Serena supplies, lips quirking upward.

"It's not like it ever could have lasted…longer than the summer. I'm not sure why I even…" He trails off, looking a little bit like a lost puppy dog, and she can't help the way her body presses into his, trying to provide some comfort.

"We all…get ourselves caught in messes sometimes, Natie," she soothes. "We both know _I_ have. It's natural. It's hard to…figure out what's right. And sometimes even when you know it's hard…to act on it."

He nods; it's clear in his eyes that he understands.

"You know what Barbara Walters says in this book?" she asks quietly, the tips of her fingers skimming the edges of the pages. "That her whole life felt like an audition." She presses her lips together. "I get that. It's like…everyone wants a different version of me, and I'm just trying to fill the role the right way. I'm tired." Her eyes fly to his, searching for empathy. "And after a while it just feels like…I don't who the real me _was_. Or is."

Nate looks uncharacteristically serious in that moment. "I'm sorry."

She shakes it off and shrugs one shoulder, attempting a bright smile as she fixes her eyes on the cover of the book she on her lap. "We're supposed to be talking about you, not me, sorry to be so –" Her sentence dies off at that moment with a sharp gasp, and she pulls her finger away so see blood bubbling up out of a deep paper cut. She needs to get up, to go inside, to run her finger under some water and get a bandage. She lifts her finger toward her mouth, a programmed reaction, but before she can all of her thoughts into movement, Nate reaches over smoothly, grasping her wrist and pulling her hand toward him, slipping her finger into his mouth instead.

It's at that moment that tears flood her eyes, and she's not sure why, because she's dealt with much worse than a paper cut. She meets his gaze for a moment and there is something meaningful exchanged between them, and though it makes her choke up, she can't pinpoint it exactly.

They let it fade, as they always do, and then she manages a smile. "You just sucked my blood," she says through strangled giggles as he removes his mouth and examines her cut.

Nate grins back. "And I'm not done yet," he says menacingly in his best vampire voice, and proceeds to pin her back to the chair, mouth pressed to her neck.

She keeps giggling, breathlessly this time, feeling the way his hand skims over her hip intimately. It sends a pulse through her, like something dropping downward from her heart. He nips gently at her skin as she says, "_Nate_."

He pulls back with that same mischievous grin, but it softens as his eyes move over her face. "Let's take that beach walk down," he suggests, standing reluctantly and offering her both of her hands.

"You got me," Serena comments laughingly, accepting his hands. He tugs her toward him and her body falls into his, arms wrapped around his neck, face buried into his shoulder.

"Yeah, I do," he replies, speaking into her hair, vampire voice long gone.

---

"You know…what you said earlier…"

They are walking on the beach, the sun hot above them, feet in the water. Their hands are linked together; they've become so accustomed to holding hands everywhere they've done this summer that it's second nature to them now.

"I say a lot of things, Nate," she laughs, stepping a little closer and kicking up a little water.

He laughs, rolls his eyes. "What you said about that book – about feeling like your life was an audition."

She presses her lips together and squints up toward the sky. "Don't worry about it. I didn't mean anything by it."

"_Serena_." He tugs her to him via their joined hands, his arm slipping around her waist, holding her close to him.

The note in his voice, the ones that cajoles for honesty, gets to her. "_Nate_," she returns.

"Tell me," he says, burying his nose in her hair for a moment.

"I just…" She frowns down at the water, the small waves that lap over their feet and tickle the sand before retreating again. "I really want…everyone to be happy, you know? And I want to live up to…I want to be _good_ and I don't want to mess everything up, but I…" She exhales, frustrated.

Nate doesn't let it go. "But what?" he prods gently.

"But sometimes I think…in between trying to be what all these other people say I should be…somewhere, maybe I lost who I am. How are you supposed to know what's you, and what other people want you to be? I don't know where the lines are."

"There shouldn't _be_ lines," he says. "You should be you. You shouldn't have to pretend. You shouldn't have to…hide things."

"What about the _bad_ things?" she asks, smirking a little.

He meets her gaze, smirks back. "What bad things?"

And she knows she's supposed to laugh, now, supposed to roll her eyes and punch his arm. She's _supposed_ to pretend, pretend that this never happened, that she and Nate are friends and anything meaningful they've ever said or done is just that: friendly.

But she can't. She swallows hard, and wants to cry, because _of course_ he would say that.

"That's the thing," she whispers, eyes on the horizon, where sea-blue and sky-blue intersect. "I never feel that with you, Nate. Even right now, this fake-dating thing. I don't feel like I'm pretending."

---

"Let's swim," Nate says. He lets go of her; unbuttons and pulls off his shirt.

"Right now?" She glances up and down the beach, her breath hitching with momentary nervousness. Normally, during the summer, she has a bikini on under her clothes every single day. But rain was forecasted for today, and she was planning on spending most of her time moping indoors while Nate was off with _whomever_, so today is not one of those days.

He nods, says sweetly, "I will if you will."

"But…" She feels shy, a rare occurrence. She can't remember what underwear she's wearing.

"It's just me, S," Nate reminds her. "No one else is here."

She bites her lip. She loves and loathes, in equal parts, the way he is _just Nate_. It makes her comfortable and skittish all at once.

"Scared?" he asks, eyes twinkling. His gaze slips down her body and then climbs upward again, lingers briefly on her legs and her breasts.

She juts her chin out. "Never."

"So let's see it, van der Woodsen," he says, and she looks into his face, alarmed. His smile is mischievous and something about it, she's not sure what, gives her a surge of confidence.

Dropping her necklaces onto the sand, she takes a deep breath and pulls her dress over her head. Her underwear _doesn't_ match, but from the way he's looking at her, she thinks that's the last thing that matters.

She throws her dress into his face, runs into the water. "Catch me if you can!"

(He does, diving into the water and tugging on her ankles so that she slips underneath the surface with him, her body colliding with his.)

---

They get ice cream, just one cone – Nate pays and Serena lets him and he orders her favourite flavour without having to ask what it is – and eat it sitting on the boardwalk, their legs dangling into the air above the water. The sun is sinking in the sky, and Serena is drunk off its rays, laughing with her head resting against Nate's shoulder.

"Book Club is such a _couple-y_ thing, Natie. Don't you think?"

He nods seriously, licking ice cream off his lower lip. "Married people join book clubs together."

Serena leans over to lick the side of the ice cream cone where it is threatening to drip. "That's good, though, right? It helps with the image."

His eyes are on her mouth; he smiles. "What image?"

"Of _us_," she laughs. "Us as a _couple_."

"Yeah. Helps with the image."

She smiles softly. "We have a pretty good image all on our own, though."

Nate laughs. "Narcissist," he teases.

She gasps and glares. "_Nerd_," she retorts. "Total SAT word."

"We're meant to be, then."

Serena throws her head back as she giggles, lets the light wind soothe her warm skin. "The Narcissist and the Nerd. _That_ should be a book club book!"

"How would it end?"

She looks over at him, at his chocolate-y mouth and his hair all tousled from their impromptu swim earlier and his eyes bluer than the ocean. Her heart feels full.

He chose her. Today, this afternoon, this moment – he chose to spend it with her.

(Here is her truth, her reality: while she's never actively fought for Nate's attention, she has always, _always_ wanted him to choose her.)

She grins, nudges his shoulder with her one and tangles one of her feet between his. "Happily ever after."

---

The two of them are late to the White Party because they get caught up playing video games, hanging backwards off the edge of Nate's bed. (She made Nate trade controllers with her once she was down to her last life.) Serena has to run home, pull on her white dress and her jewellery and style her hair. She's putting on mascara when Nate taps on her door.

"Ready?"

"Almost," she promises, throwing him a smile over her shoulder as she rummages around for her lip gloss. She freezes, laughs a little. "What're you lookin' at?"

"You," he admits, leaning against the frame of her door. "You look beautiful."

Serena smiles. "You clean up pretty good, too."

---

"_That's_ your older woman?" Serena demands in a heated whisper, having pulled Nate into one of the closets in her grandmother's house. "I thought by _older_ you meant _college_, not _duchess_." She hits his chest. "What were you _thinking_?"

He rubs the spot she just hit. "Jeez, Eric was right. That face really _isn't_ my friend."

"Nate!"

"I – I don't know, Serena," he admits, shrugging sheepishly, and she feels just a little bit sorry for him then. "It's like you said before. I'm just trying…to figure out the lines."

"Don't give me that. You _crossed _a line and you know it."

He's smirking a little and it practically makes her growl.

"_What_, Nate?"

"Nothing," he says hurriedly, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her hair. "Nothing, really. I'm sorry. I know it was stupid. It's a very, very stupid summer fling and it's over."

She can feel the way her glare softens, easing its way off her face. "You looked like someone had kicked your puppy when you saw her with her husband." She swallows. "Do you like her?"

"No. I don't know." He shakes his head. "It just…it sucks. You were sad about Dan all summer, and now she…she has someone, too, and I have…no one."

Serena exhales slowly, not entirely sure what he's implying. She just knows that he looks depressed, and they're in this closet together, and it's dark and they're close and –

"She keeps shooting me looks that could kill," she manages to breathe out. "Your older woman."

Nate smiles wryly. "Well, she knows we're dating."

The way he says it, it's like they're _actually_ dating. "_Dating_, you mean," she corrects, complete with air quotes.

In a thoroughly unhelpful move, Nate just shrugs.

Serena sighs. "Hey, you want to make her feel as jealous as you do?"

His eyebrows rise, like he might know what she's thinking of doing.

She smiles, tells him, "I will if you will."

---

It turns out she's not entirely prepared to kiss him.

She tells herself it's just a kiss, just something to make him feel better and to annoy the duchess, but that's not all it is.

The feel of his lips moving against hers, his mouth coaxing hers open, his tongue touching hers – she's not ready for it. She's not ready for the way her heartbeat speeds up or the way it feels, so familiar and so easy and so good, like home. It's summer and Nate and it doesn't feel fake; it feels, instead, like she's finally found out where she belongs.

When they pull apart, she's breathless, giddy and giggly. And Nate's eyes are wide and happy as he breathes out, "_Wow_."

"Yeah, wow," she whispers.

Nate looks across the lawn, and it's only then that she remembers that it was _just_ a kiss, meant to make the duchess jealous.

Serena feels a prickle of something all throughout her, and she thinks she might be a little jealous, too.

Maybe.

---

Serena and Nate leave the party together, head to the beach for a barefoot walk once the sun has set, and she knows they're catching eyes. She knows that they must look cute, must look like a real couple, with both of her arms around one of his and her cheek pressed against his shoulder as he whispers into her hands, making fun of one of the many guests.

"Piggyback me, Natie," she orders teasingly. She doesn't expect him to say yes, but he does, bending so that she can hop up on his back. She has to hike up her dress a little and the first time her legs get tangled, but she makes it on the second try. "Put me down when you get tired," she laughs.

Nate chuckles, hands hooked under her legs. "I won't get tired."

He does, though, eventually; ends up tripping over a piece of driftwood on the beach and sending them both toppling onto the sand in a pile of limbs and laughter.

She touches his face as she catches her breath. "Are you sad?" She just wants to _know_. She wants to know what that woman meant to him, and what the kiss meant, what _wow_ meant.

Shaking the sand out of his hair, he smiles at her under the moon and the stars. "You always make me happy."

She grins back. (She can't help it.)

---

Nate drops her off back at home around eleven.

"Home before midnight," he says, bowing to her goofily.

"Such a gentleman." She kisses his cheek. "Tomorrow?"

He kisses her cheek in return, a lot closer to the corner of her mouth.

---

She can't fall asleep. At almost two o'clock in the morning, she's still wide awake and sitting up in bed, flipping through the old photo albums that line her grandmother's parlour shelves along with Cece's collection of first-edition books that Serena has honesty never, in her lifetime, seen anyone read.

The photo albums, though – those have been leafed through time and time again. They start with Cece's mother's wedding and go from there, documenting the lives of the Rhodes family. Serena usually starts with her mother's baby pictures and works her way through Lily's life until she reaches the beginning of her own, and then Eric's. The pictures from her childhood are her favourites: Eric all wrapped up in her arms, her silly tomboy insistence that she had to wear sneakers with her dresses, cuddled on her grandma's lap, grinning over ice cream cones with her friends.

One of her favourites is of her and Nate, her lips puckered and pressed to his cheek, his smile shy and silly the way only a little boy's can be. They can't more than six and there's grass in their hair and there's something about it that hurts her heart, but almost in a good way. It's printed in black and white; it looks kind of timeless and she likes that.

She sighs, pulls the photograph carefully out of its sleeve and tucks it into the drawer of her nightstand instead. The album falls closed on her lap and she drops it into the pile on her bed, standing up on top of her comforter. Her room at her grandmother's is so _white_ and _lacy_, demure and girly. The television and the crayon drawings she did on the wall when she was four years old are the only flaws in that image.

Heaving another sigh, she glances up at the fan. It is unmoving; Celia Rhodes has a very sophisticated air conditioning system – the fans are there for decorative reasons. Nonetheless, Serena wants to turn it on. She thinks it might have some kind of placebo effect, and just make her _think_ that it's less hot than it is. She's wearing nothing more than a pair of boyshort underwear and one of Nate's old t-shirts, a faithful staple in her summer wardrobe, but she still feels like she might melt from the heat.

She gathers up the albums, intent on placing them on the shelf (white and pristine, of course) above her bed, on the wall, and that's when she hears a quiet voice say, tone conspiratorial, "Hey, you."

She doesn't turn around right away. She knows who it is. She just smiles to herself, heaves the albums onto the shelf, and replies in a whisper, "Hey yourself."

His hand touches her legs, slips over her calf, and it feels so familiar – sends her flying into the briefest of flashbacks,_ you'reamess, soareyou_. She blinks down at him, a little dizzy, and he smiles back.

Serena plants her hands on her hips. "I'm not supposed to have gentleman callers this late at night."

"I sneaked in all _stealthily_, and you won't even let me stay?" He pretends to pout, but she can still see his smile in his eyes.

"Maybe for a while." And maybe on another night she'd flop down on the bed and wait for him to join her, but tonight she reaches down toward him, arms around his neck. And he catches her, pulls her close and eases her into him until she can comfortably wrap her legs around him. She buries her face in his shoulder; his sweater smells like night in the summertime, ashy and fresh all at once. She sighs as he sets her down on the bed. "Nate…"

He looks at her, their blue eyes locked, and his lips quirk upward. "Serena."

---

They watch late-night cartoons together, the old stuff with Wily Coyote running around, stretched out on top of her rumpled white comforter. It's still hot, but she shares her pillow with him anyway, closes her eyes during the commercials and breathes him in.

"I had a good time with you today," he murmurs against her hair.

"Ice cream was good," she agrees faintly. She's warm and comfy and sleepy. She wants to ask if he'll stay with her all night.

"Second-favourite part," Nate agrees whole-heartedly.

Serena smiles, her eyes still closed. "Okay, I'll bite. What was your _favourite _part?"

"Hmmm." He pauses as if he's thinking, even though they're both aware that he already knows his answer. "I think it was the part when you kissed me."

Her eyes flutter open, focusing abruptly on his face.

Nate laughs, touches his nose to hers and tilts his head toward the screen. "Show's back on, S."

---

She waits until the next commercial to ask. "Did you mean that?"

"Best part of my whole summer," he says casually, but his eyes are pinned on hers, trying to decipher her reaction.

She bites her lip. Her cheeks feel too warm and it's not just the heat.

He leans a little closer, touches her face as he murmurs, "God, look at you."

Serena takes a sharp breath, one of her legs slipping between his. "What about me?"

"You're so beautiful." His eyes are hooded and his mouth is smiling, and she can _feel_ it, the way he just _means_ it.

"You're just sayin' that because I'm in your shirt."

He chuckles, looks at her mouth. "I missed you, S."

She laughs. "You did not. You couldn't have. I've been right here."

"But not…" He trails off, searching for words. "Not _really_. You had Dan, and everything's been a mess this year, and I could hardly look at you because…"

There's a beat of silence, so she prompts, "Because?"

Nate shrugs a little bashfully. "Because it hurt. And so, yeah, I missed you."

She sighs, closes her eyes again for a moment. "It was just…it was too much, this year." She doesn't want to explain more than that. She thinks she might not need to.

"And?"

Her eyes fly open. "And what?"

Nate grins. "And, you missed me too, right?"

Serena laughs and kicks at his foot. "Yes, I missed you, too," she says honestly.

He watches her face for a moment, cartoons completely forgotten. "This summer, though," he says cautiously. "It wasn't too much, was it?"

She shakes her head. "This summer was perfect. Being your fake girlfriend's pretty awesome, Archibald. I'm starting to understand the hype," she adds teasingly.

His eyes light up a little more. "So maybe…maybe this summer wasn't _enough_."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you _think_ I mean?"

Her heart stutters. She feels more hopeful than she should. "I'll tell if you tell," she whispers.

"Maybe fake-dating wasn't enough," he says. She can hear the caution in his voice.

"Maybe…" She sighs. "Maybe real-dating would be too much."

"Or maybe it would be perfect. You just said this summer was perfect."

She looks at him, earnest blue eyes and mussed-up hair. He's right there, in her bed, and this whole day – from morning until this moment – it was kind of perfect. And if every other day could be like today…

He wraps an arm around her, tugs her a little closer, and she lets him. "We could do it right this time," he tells her softly. "I promise. You and me. Like it should've been."

"You and me…" His mouth is so close to hers. She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry I left, Natie." She knows he'll understand exactly what she's referring to.

"I'm not _mad_," he says, as if the whole idea is ludicrous. He smiles at her again. "I just…like I said, I missed you. Everyday."

"_Every_ day? Every single one?"

He nods seriously.

Serena touches his cheek and presses herself a little closer. She nods too. "Back atcha."

---

Outside, overhead, there is a crackling noise and the sky explodes with colour.

"Fireworks!" Serena says gleefully, and they flip over onto their stomachs at the same time, shoulders bumping as they laugh. There's a window just above her bed that gives them a perfect view. She giggles, kicking her legs up into the air. It feels good, just like when they were little kids – it feels timeless.

Colours scatter everywhere, flying across the scars, and Nate takes her chin in her hand, leans over and kisses her in a very serious, very _adult_ kind of way. She kisses him back, a little tentatively at first, and then her mouth moves against his a little desperately, because she just _aches_ for him – he is so familiar and this, this really is perfect.

And all of a sudden his body's pressed over hers, every part of them touching, and her back is pressed into the mattress. One of his hands creeps under her (his) shirt, tickling her skin gently as it moves upward, and her fingers are suddenly, impatiently pushing at his boxers.

"_Nate_," she says, definitely a gasp, almost a moan; it gets caught between their lips.

He kisses her cheek repeatedly, until she's giggling a little breathlessly as he tilts his head and drops kisses down the column of her neck.

"Is the teddy bear watching?" he jokes, referring to her old bear with the Scottish kilt that Nate used to make say dirty things to make her laugh.

And she laughs now, catching his lips with her own again. He makes it so that she can't think. "Too soon?" she murmurs, arching her back a little.

"No. No, no, no," he says, and they both laugh a little. "Never is."

"It's been like _two minutes_, Natie," she giggles, hands on his back. "I'm pretty sure the rule is three dates."

"It's been _two months_," he corrects her. "We've been dating for two months. Today is two months, exactly."

Serena smiles. "Happy anniversary."

He nuzzles his nose to hers as he tucks her hair out of her face. "Happy anniversary."

She hooks a leg around his waist and grins. "What'd'ya get me?"

"Fireworks. They're still going."

"Aw, but I didn't get _you_ anything!" she exclaims playfully.

Nate smiles softly, his hand against her cheek as he pulls her into another kiss. "Yeah, you did."


End file.
